Warhammer Meta-Setting
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Possibly hinted towards in the original fluff, definitely revealed during the End Times and expanded upon in the Age of Sigmar, the Warhammer Fantasy universe isn't, as previously thought, a single universe constantly assailed by Chaos, but rather one universe out of many. The Warhammer Fantasy universe is in fact locked into a perpetual cycle of birth, stagnation and destruction, with every cycle ending with Chaos consuming as much of the worlds as it can, sating themselves and giving time for the powers of Order to recollect themselves, recreate the universe and gather the souls of the last universe so new life can be created.
How this fits with 40k is not known, but at least it is known that the Warp has connections to both the Fantasy and 40k universe, and that the Chaos Gods from the two settings are the same (more or less).
Needless to say, the concept has an inherent bounty of Skub around it.
The Cycle
When Chaos wins in a cycle and devours it, the universe is left as a half-empty void, with the surviving souls bobbing around, alongside leftovers from the old world and what not. The surviving characters are (usually) the ones who can be considered gods or half-gods (since they'll be bound up into powers about as strong as Chaos, such as the Magical Winds). From here on, it's essentially a free-for-all, with the vying Gods now having the ability to take the raw magic of the universe and form it into something, the way they like. The general world is created by a sort of godly being by the name of Dracothian, a dragon made of starlight whose only purpose in existence is to recreate a physical world for the beings of the new one to live in, using what's left behind after Chaos is done with the previous world as raw materials. As such, he's more of a cleanup crew for the Warhammer worlds than anything else, as he's not shown to have any inclination towards intervening in whatever universe ends up coming into existence until after its inevitable destruction, at which time he will again recreate it. Similarly, the Chaos Gods neither seem to know nor care about its existence.
The new gods are then essentially allowed to do whatever they want with the universe. Many of them will likely want to fight Chaos to avenge the world they once lived in, but nothing necessarily requires them to do so. It is normal for them to create new races or form new armies that are made to fight Chaos, but since no one has been able to stave the Chaos Gods forever, no one seems to be able to make an army that can actually resist Chaos completely, or at least repel it from their universe. That said, Sigmar is suggested as being the first entity to be considered an equal to the Chaos Gods in power, and the Emperor has similarly held out longer than the Ruinous Powers anticipated (albeit with more grimdark than in Sigmar's case).
Just as the worlds, realms and universes are formed, Chaos gets its shit up and running, and after having picked the last few mortal souls out of their corrupted, jagged teeth, begin taking on the physical world again and corrupts it as much as possible. Though they might lose many times before any actual damage has been done to the physical world, a little corruption at a time will let the thirsting Gods enjoy a little refreshing souls from time to time, while planning out new ways to kill the world off for good. The Chaos Gods often have mutually exclusive goals in every Cycle, as some of them enjoy wracking up shit better than others do, so they rarely have the entire force of Chaos behind them, just as the different Gods left from the last cycle might have their own agendas to pursue.
Then, when Chaos finally get tired of the current Cycle, or when a sufficiently powerful Chaos Champion rallies the forces of Chaos behind him, Chaos goes all out and begins taking over the Material worlds, until the worlds are so strained that they can't keep themselves running and the Gods of the Cycle can't keep it together anymore, the world simply rips itself apart. All creation is engulfed in the Warp, and everything goes back to the Void it started as. While the Chaos Gods go snack on souls and the old Gods are destroyed, new gods formed from the mightiest heroes and warriors of the past world will inevitably escape and witness the creation of a new world.
And then the Cycle begins anew, as it has ever since Chaos first came into existence.
TL:DR- It's basically Ragnarok, as GW, being big fans of Norse myth, couldn't pass up taking the Germanic concept of cycled fate and destiny.
Known Cycles and their Gods
As far as we know, the Fantasy and 40k Warhammers are separated in terms of their timelines - The End Times has hinted towards the current 40k timeline and the Fantasy timeline being parallel to each other, with the Warp providing a faint connection between the two. For example, after randomly pressing buttons on a Lizardman communications device, the Skaven managed to make contact with beings whose voices sounded like High Elves, but with an otherworldly accent. The cowards promptly destroyed their gadget of course, but you don't get better hints than that. It's possible that the Warp screws this up big time, since time doesn't really work there, but as far as we know, the cycles are separate in the two settings. Or perhaps the 40K setting hasn't gotten through its cycle yet, we don't know.
Fantasy
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The Proto cycle
The cycle that came before the fantasy cycle. We don't know much about this cycle: are most concert bit of information comes from a quote from the Obernarn Stone found in Tome of Salvation. The quote reads as follows:
"And then the Cataclysm came. King Taal rose from His Forest, and with Dark Morr muttering dire portents in His ear, He banished all immortals from the world. But the Cataclysm’s architects refused His order. The Crow, the Hound, the Serpent, and the Vulture were jealous of King Taal, and had tried to use the Great Gates to take what was His. They had failed. As the other immortals fled, the Four attacked, bitter and angry with their frustrations. Many died. After countless battles, King Taal was eventually surrounded. There were few still by his side. Ulric the Wolf. Noble Margileo. Just Verena. Sotek the Snake. Manann of the Sea. And Gentle Shallya, tear-stained and afraid. Even Smiling Ranald had fled, and now hid in the Places Between, fearful for the future. Then, just as the Four and their allies arrived for the Final Battle, Flaming Phoenix, whom all had thought dead, returned from atop His Gleaming Pyramid, and He smote about Him. Thus the rebels were pushed behind the Great Gates, and were sealed there forever. But they were restless in their cage, and soon worked to escape."
Why does this matter? Because the Flaming Phoenix is clearly Asuryan, and the Elven gods were all refluffed to be survivors of the proto-cycle, therefore this could be a recording of an event that actually happened in the proto-cycle. If we take this as assumption as true this indicates a few things.
First that theHuman gods, are all survivors of the protocycle, with status comparable to age of Sigmar Gods. Sotek is an odd addition as well as the only non human god mentioned by name.
Second: Asuryan is not typically associated with 'Gleaming Pyramids', but Sotek of the lizardmen very much is so, in fact lizardmen have temple-pyramids-spaceships. As the stone refers to him returned from atop His Gleaming Pyramid thus implying the thing is moving (replace pyramid with chariot and it makes just as much sense), this could be the first (both in and out of setting) depiction of these star ship-pyramids. Also Asuryan is associated with prophecy, something the old ones are also very much associated with. This perhaps points to Asuryan BEING an old one.
Third: old lore has the old ones had polar gates (webways in all but name) that broke apart and let chaos into the world. In the Obernarn Stone however the gates are not destroyed but instead chaos is merely 'pushed back' beyond them. As you read bellow the idea of chaos emerging into a world, running rampart, then being pushed back is replicated both in the Fantasy and Age of Sigmar so it thematically fits with the other two settings.
Ultimately though we can't ignore that the Obernarn Stone is only found in Tome of Salvation, and that book was published in 2008, long before the end times or age of Sigmar. Still it is the only real look we have at that proto-cycle and the parallels between it and later cycles are interesting. Additional nothing in the stone is self have been contridicted. . . yet so it is still canon, albeit as canon as an in universe stone can be.
The Fantasy Cycle
This is Warhammer Fantasy as we know it - It is comprised of one planet, two moons and one star, has some different Gods from different pantheons and, of course, Chaos. The Fantasy world was destroyed in the The End Times, when Chaos upped its game, Archaon went berserk, Sigmar came back into the Emperor's body, the moon (no, the other one) was blown up and the Lord of Death ate three gods. Long story.
The gods of this world were leftovers from the last one, according to Lileath, who first revealed the existence of the cycle during the End Times. The first beings to have an influence on the created world seem to be the Old Ones, who supposedly created all the races, including, but not limited to, the humans, elves, ogres, halflings and dwarves, all in the pursuit of making the perfect anti-chaotic race (the last two were the Halflings who were a prototype and the ogres were left half finished as the Chaos invasion came). When that didn't end well (all races being susceptible to Chaos in one way or other), they created the Lizardmen, who worked, but were both misplaced (being placed far from anything of importance) and too few to do an actual difference. It's unclear how much of the old fluff is still holding about the creation of the other races, but since the elven gods are also leftovers from an old universe it's unlikely.
Speaking of elven gods, the elven pantheon is one of the most active ones in the Fantasy world, as all of them (Asuryan especially) are actively battling Chaos. As they are now fluffed to have been survivors of the old proto cycle this make sense.
Timelines from the High Elf army book (7th edition is the copy I'm looking at) say that a cycle lasts longer then 4 and a half thousand years. For a point of reference the bronze age was roughly 4,000 years ago.
Age of Sigmar cycle
It's unclear if the age counts as a cycle yet. The problem is the age of Sigmar still exist as a number Realms made of each of the winds of magic, (likely meaning that the winds of magic are consistent across each Cycle), compared to the last cycle there is nothing we would understand as a 'planet'. If this is a Cycle and not a period of time between cycles where the realms will collapse into a single planet that says there is a high degree of variances between the actual make up of the world between Cycles. The Fantasy Cycle was just one planet, in total, not part of a larger galaxy that presumable also would have been unmade.
The date "4,500" we got from the warhammer high elf army books is the start of reign of the first phoenix king, Aenarion the defender, who became king in the wake of the first chaos incursions into the world before that we don't have any dates as the Asur didn't keep calendars before than and the Dawi never shared. This means that from the point chaos first begins to invade in bulk to the end is somewhere in the ball park of 4.5 thousand years. In age of Sigmar canon the point where chaos broke into the world would either be the "Age of chaos" or the later part of the The Age of Myth so from that point Sigmar's got him self 4.5 thousand years until the next cycle assuming that's a constant.
Here's where things start unraveling; when Chaos first came to the Mortal Realms, they WON. All organized resistance was crushed except for Sigmar's realm of Azyr, the chaos hordes being left to raid and despoil all of the now-isolated kingdoms and empires of the other seven realms. They then proceeded to putter around aimlessly while Sigmar got his counterattack ready, making no attempt to destroy the world and dragging their fights with the remaining centers of resistance out as far as they could. The time period the game is set 500 years later (reference: The Realmgate Wars - All-Gates, page 4), when the powers of Order are finally striking back to reclaim a world that Chaos has dominated for half a millennium.
- The counter point is that something similar happened to the high elves. Chaos invaded and they got there shit kicked (While dwarfs hid in there mountains, which isn't a cowardly thing to do in perfect fairness when faced with Chaos, they were probably under siege 24/7) in until Aenarion the defender, became the Phoenix king and the High Elves started writing dates down. While it did not last an age, there was a large period of time where chaos ran rampart across the world before the elves got it's shit together to pull together win by deus ex machina (Caledor's vortex). So this pattern of chaos coming, then receding at first does not seem to be unprecedented.
- On the other hand, this time Sigmar is here, alive and kicking, the Celestial Prime can purify Chaos enslaved people with Ghal-Maraz, and the novels have shown even Nurgle can get hurt by the power of Azyr, while things are still on the balance it's the first time the potentiality of a real victory against Chaos is plausible.
- To further elaborate on that last point, the Chaos Gods might decide that this is the cycle where the eternal stalemate of Only War being forced upon existence so as to avoid potential destruction.
40K
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40k is scale is a lot larger then warhammer's, being a galaxy (amongst billions of other galaxies, one must remember)and not a single planet. If however, age of Sigmar is a full cycle then it's possible to imagine that in this cycle rather then make one world, the Dracothian made the entire universe we can see looking up with a telescope, and remember 40k is OUR cycle, we live in the Age of Terra.
Presumably this was done to give chaos a lot more 'toys' so as to delay the cycle a lot more. Given that 40k has lasted at least 13 billion years, which is something on the order of 9,111 times longer then fantasy did, assuming that not too much time passed before Aenarion became the phoenix king and the elves started writing shit down. The length of time 40k's has existed compared to fantasy gets longer if you throw our understanding of planet formation in as well, but we will assume our current models and theory's don't work in 40k for simplicity sake (it's the problem with science fiction, you're always tempted to apply them). Maybe Chaos was playing in the Andromeda galaxy or something while earth was evolving us (although it's worth noting that looking at 40K by itself it's likely that each galaxy gets it own set of Warp gods, and even that a galaxy more noblebright than ours would likely thus produce equally noblebright gods), if we did evolve and did not just get plopped onto our planet at the end "Age of Sigmar" during the last ice age and replaced/literally outfucked local advanced primates.
Slaanesh was born during the eldar fall. If the other cycles are canon to 40k, then Slaanesh was reborn showing that gods can appear within a cycle.
No signs of the winds of magic though given the different discipline in the last couple 40k rule books it could they exist but have different names or are thought of differently.
The big question is, is 40k going to go through it's own End time? (assuming game workshop does not end up "once bitten twice shy" about major setting shake up's after the Age of Sigmar reaction.) It is a tough call. 40k is explicitly said to be in the 'time of ending' but that by Imperium's metrics. Yes things are getting pretty bad with Aliens like the Tau and Tyranids banging on the door step, chaos sneaking up the back way, Rebellions starting and the Emperors throne failing, all of which are bad, but it's not clear if that means it's all going to be unmade and that Chaos is going to win anytime soon. It has been suggested that if the Emperor actually dies it will submerge all of the galaxy into the warp, which would be the 'end state' for any 40k End Times but it's unclear if that's true as a god was made in setting, Slaanesh, and it did not cause a reality collapse like at the end of the Fantasy cycle's End times. If chaos did 'win', things might get unmade but by the same token they would need a total victory to drag the whole of the galaxy, or maybe even universe since the Tyranids need to be coming from somewhere. Even if 40k as we know it goes kablooey and the galaxy becomes a massive eye of terror that just might mean it's time to move on to the next galaxy and the settings true "end times" is only when every galaxy in the universe has been individually consumed by chaos, which is not actually mathematically possible for a assortment of space time reasons. And of course if the Tyranids win and devour the entire galaxy and kill off the local warp gods from starvation (and everyone else) who the fuck knows what would happen. If the Dracothian making the 40k universe was to make sure he did not have to do this shit again for a while, he fucking succeeded.
Alternatively, they have absolutely nothing to do with eachother and only Warhammer Fantasy suffers from the cycles - thematically this makes more sense than it sounds, since not only is 40k a lot more removed from fantasy tropes and (begrudgingly) closer to scientific fact (there's a whole universe out there, it's 13 billion years old, we have definite points of origin for both chaos itself and every major chaos god rather than their existence predating the setting), it also suffers cycles of its own in-universe. The order of the Dark Age of Technology led to chaos of the Age of Strife led to the order of the Great Crusade led to the chaos of the Horus Heresy, and so on and so forth, and that's only within the history of humanity.
If 40k exists in this cycle, it seems very likely it was the first and influenced the later additions rather than resulting from something prior. Yeah, that's right. The truth you all feared. 40k is canon and Fantasy was Tzeentch's fan fiction on a corner of the Warp where he makes and torments "gods" for his amusement. As for the setting itself, there is only war and an eternal stalemate to perpetuate it.
So who the hell is the Architect of this shit?
Unless you count GW itself, nobody knows. The Chaos Gods are the most powerful beings in the meta-setting, but even they seem to be just one more part of the endless cycle and they sure as hell wouldn't be interested in actually creating anything that wasn't already corrupted by Chaos. No other god seems to have enough power to create or sustain a cycle on its own either, assuming that the meta-setting was even created by a sentient being. Just one more question of many that most people can only speculate over.
Theories
As a surprise to no one, a lot of theories began popping up the instant we began knowing about the inner workings of the Warhams - In fact, they had been there all the time.
The Dracothion is a C'tan
In the Age of Sigmar rulebook, it is explained that Sigmar held fast to the core of the old Warhammer World after Chaos consumed it, and flew through nothingness until it stumbled across the Dracothion, a "dragon made of starlight". This seemingly immortal being gave Sigs a manual with information on how to make new things out of nothing with cheat codes and console commands. Together, they began creating the new world, shaping the Winds into shape and creating Sigs' new clubhouse for his "We hate Chaos" club.
What is striking about the Dracothion is that it shares a lot of similarities with another "dragon", namely the Void Dragon. Both are described as being 'light' in their physical forms (the Dracothion being "made of starlight", and the Void Dragon looking like "dark light" when consuming stars and having the light of devoured stars within it, are both described as "dragons" for reasons or other (the Dracothion physically resembling a dragon, and the Void Dragon remembering itself taking that form when it was defeated on Earth by the Emperor).
The most interesting part of this theory is that, if the Void Dragon can do the same rebuilding shit as the Dracothion, what does it mean that the Emperor put it to sleep? It would imply that the Emperor didn't wanted it to recreate the world, and that there was the risk of it doing it... The Void Dragon also supposedly allows the Adeptus Mechanicus to control machinery, and it's canon that the Void Dragon can control machines. This doesn't sound much like what the Dracothion does (creating new worlds and stuff) but, think about this: The Dracothian can literally create things in the setting, and is outside the powers within the setting (being immortal and untouchable by Chaos), which could mean that it simply has control of the setting's "core programming". Programming. Which machines use.
So the Emperor has essentially made it so the future of the setting is in the hands of technophiles who have no idea what they're doing.
But all of this begs the obvious question: if Dracothion really is a C'tan, why is it the only one who has the power to create new life and new worlds, and why does it care so little about the rest of existence when other C'tan would have used that power to enslave the material universe several times over? For all we know, it's just a really weird dragon with too much time on its hands.
Furthermore, the discovery that Dracothion was just one of many "Godbeasts" has all but torpedoed this theory. The other Godbeasts that have been described are explicitly said to be mortal (and several of them were killed by Sigmar in the Age of Myth) and vulnerable to being corrupted by Chaos- both of which are known to be untrue for the C'tan. Additionally, out of all the Godbeasts only Dracothion is clearly shown to be sentient- the rest of them seem to be little more than extremely powerful monsters, but this may just be due to our lack of background information on them.
40k goes through the same cycles as fantasy,
Stop me if You've heard this before. There was an human ruler who would be worshiped as a god, who created a mighty empire, but then the ruler was trapped/crippled by chaos. Without the ruler the man's empire had good times, and bad times, but slowly slide backwards into darkness. Then there is a big battle with chaos, the empire loses, a planet is destroyed and chaos spreads. To fight Chaos a great hero thought gone returns, and creates a new type of soldier to fight Chaos as he leads the nation back to it's former glory.
As George Lucas said: "It's like poetry... It rhymes." The plot points and exact details are hardly 1:1 but they do rhyme at least. 40k definitely experiences cycles similar to fantasy, in fact if one looks closely enough one could probably postulate that the rise of the Emperor himself marks the closing of one cycle, the Dark Age of Technology and the start of cycle/age of the Imperium which spans from M31-M42. In M42 though Guilliman rise marks the close of the Imperial cycle and the start of a new one. The only difference is with so many more planets, they can afford to have a few (hundred) blown up or lost to mark the change from one cycle to the next without the galaxy going suffering from a divide by zero function.
The Horus Heresy novels Vengeful Spirit and Wolfsbane seem to have the Warp run on Fantasy rules, with Big E and Horus going to Age of Sigmar-style mortal realms that just seem to exist in the Warp alongside the realms of Chaos. Both built an army of mortal followers before discarding them under unknown contexts.
However considering Slaanesh was born in 40k (while in Fantasy it merely...existed) this could indicate the 40k universe to be the first in the cycle (or at least precede Fantasy and AoS) or Fantasy/AoS takes place sometime after the birth of Slaanesh in some corner of the Warp. Alternatively, 40k which is stated to take place in our far future is separate to the Fantasy/AoS universe but connected by the Warp.